L.Michelle Salvant has been wearing smart glasses daily for years, harnessing their potential to enhance personal therapy, healing, and self-discovery. Her engagement with wearable technology began as a Google Glass Explorer, which sparked her interest in documenting and reflecting on life’s moments through what she developed as “Immersive Journaling”. This approach has not only transformed her personal experiences but also encouraged others to explore their own stories in profound new ways. Following her passion for technology and storytelling, L.Michelle founded LMichelleMedia. The company f ..read more

Alex Westner is the CEO and co-founder of Xander, a company at the forefront of using augmented reality (AR) technology to create innovative solutions for individuals with hearing loss. Xander's product, live captioning AR smart glasses, allows users to engage in conversations with real-time transcriptions displayed directly in their field of vision. This approach positions Xander to directly address the challenges faced by those with hearing impairments in everyday communication. Before embarking on his journey with Xander, Alex's career was deeply rooted in the audio industry, where he devel ..read more

Zac Duff is the co-founder and CEO of JigSpace, a company focused on making it simple to create and share 3D instructions for anything, or, as their tag line suggests, making the hard to explain hard to forget. If you’ve watched the introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, or seen the demos or device itself, then you’ve had a glimpse of JigSpace when you saw the beautifully rendered Formula F1 car with the animation of the airflow around the wings and body. Zac’s story starts in Tasmania, where he developed an early passion for 3D and game design. He studied game design in Australia before workin ..read more

Nils Pihl returns as our guest for a second time on the podcast. He is the CEO and founder of Auki Labs, a company dedicated to revolutionizing augmented reality positioning. Auki’s technology uses peer-to-peer communication to establish a distributed spatial computing protocol. In this episode, we revisit some of the themes from the first episode, such as the concept of language as the oldest form of augmented reality and Auki's role in enhancing communication through augmented reality positioning. Nils background as a behavioral engineer specializing in Meme Theory and Memetic Engineering ad ..read more

Michael Hoffman, or “Hoff” as most know him, is the co-founder and CEO at IQXR, a company solving the hardest problems facing global-scale, enterprise XR deployments, and doing so with an open source approach. Previously Michael spent nearly a decade working with the Microsoft Hololens team. He was a Principal Engineering Lead at Microsoft for a couple of years, left to be the founding partner of Object theTheory, where he and his team worked with enterprises to leverage AR and VR technologies, often in combination with IoT and AI/Machine Learning. And then he went back to Microsoft for a coup ..read more

Yi Xu is the director of XR Technology at OPPO, a leading Android smartphone company that's innovating in AR with their Air Glass product line. Prior to OPPO, Yi received a PhD in computer science, specializing in computer vision. He utilized these skills as computer scientist and engineer at GE Global Research and CapsoVision, working on a number of projects revolving around 3D computer vision. He then worked as a technical leader at JD. com, shaping the roadmap for their mobile augmented reality research. Yi then joined OPPO in 2019 as the lab manager of Mixed Reality Lab, and quickly rose t ..read more

Kirin Sinha is the co-founder and CEO of Illumix, a company building the digital infrastructure for real world venues. You may be familiar with Illumix if you’re a fan of the horror franchise, Five Nights at Freddy’s, and the mobile game, Five Nights at Freddy’s AR: Special Delivery. While the game found a tremendous amount of success, the company has shifted its focus to enterprise customers and raised $18M in Series A financing in early 2023. Prior to founding Illumix, Kirin was the founder and Executive Director of Shine for Girls, whose mission is to transform the lives of middle school gi ..read more

Evan Rose is the founder and president of Rose Digital, a company specializing in using augmented reality to help brands engage and delight their customers. Beyond that, Rose Digital serves as an innovation partner for its clients. On the side, Evan is the founder of AR Post, one of the leading news sources for AR and VR. He’s also the co-founder and board president of The Steve Fund, which is the nation’s first organization focused on supporting the mental health and emotional well-being of college students of color. Prior to Rose Digital, Evan worked in finance at hedge funds and investment ..read more

Ross Finman is the CEO of Augmodo, a company utilizing AI and AR to revolutionize grocery store experiences and economics starting with the personal shoppers who fulfill online grocery purchases. Previously Ross spent 4 ½ years at Niantic. There he founded the AR mapping and Visual Positioning System (VPS) effort before becoming the AR Strategy Lead and then the general manager for the AR Headset group. He joined Niantic through the acquisition of his first startup, Escher Reality, which became the foundation for Niantic’s AR Platform, now called Lightship. He started Escher Reality as he was ..read more

Replay of an interview originally published in April 2023: Maryam Sabour is the General Manager and Head of Business for the AR Headsets group at Niantic, where the goal is to enable everyday adventures and real-life social interaction through location-based augmented reality. Maryam studied law and business at university, going on to earn a Juris Doctorate at McGill University. Early in her career, she was drawn to entrepreneurship, having founded an e-commerce company and a legal clinic for startups. Maryam was drawn into the world of VR, where she spent several years working as a founder o ..read more